4K to 8K to 12K to 16K AT THE FLICK OF A SWITCH!
Imagine yourself playing your JM at a gig, and the song you are playing calls for clean jangly chordal strumming on the verses, but the chorus calls for agressive power chords. Sure, you can step on some boutique battery driven stomp box to get some overdrive and it will sound OK, or you can use a foot switch to switch over to another channel of a 2 channel amp. However, the fundamental problem is that you are adding overdrive to a 6K pickup which is in general better suited for clean sounds. A far superior tone can be achieved if you used a 12K or even 16K P90 style pickup for this chorus section because you will get a more organic overdrive tone by actually having the pickup drive the amp. My suggestion certainly sounds silly, after all you are not about to break out your soldering iron in the middle of a gig to swap out your bridge pickup! Well, imagine if you could achieve the same result by simply flipping a switch on your guitar.
WHAT
IS S15™ SWITCHING?
Simply put, the Rothstein S15™ switching system will give you 15 killer sounds out of your JM bridge pickup, while leaving the rest of the guitar circuit exactly the same. We are not talking about 15 filters like you would get out of some flimsy varitone. Not at all. We are talking about transforming your pickup from one voiced for clean tones at 4K, to a thicker version at 8K, to one voiced for crunch at 12K to another voiced for a hard edge at 16K. It will provide you
you with the ultimate combination of tone and versatility, it is really easy to use, and it looks really cool to boot!!!
This mod is entirely passive (no batteries) and it will drop right into your existing Jazzmaster easily requiring no routing at all (see the FAQ below).
DO THE MATH: S15™ SWITCHING = 15 SOUNDS USING 4 COILS OF A SINGLE NOVAK CAT5 PICKUP
S15™ switching uses four DPDT switches to connect any
four pickup coils in 15 different combinations. The switches
are wired in such a way that whenever any two or more or
the four pickup coils are engaged in the circuit simultaneously,
the coils are connected in series, yielding the a very meaty tone.
In this case (implemented in a Jazzmaster), the four coils are
actually all part of a single Curtis Novak CAT5 bridge pickup,
so you can get these 15 killer sounds out of your JM bridge
pickup. Curtis Novak and I have teamed
up on this mod specifically to be used for the Jazzmaster®,
but the switching system can easily be adapted to work in
any other scenario involving 4 coils (such as a dual humbucker
guitar).
WHAT
ISTHE CURTIS NOVAK CAT5 PICKUP?
The prewired harness comes
with an innovative (bordering on revolutionary) Curtis Novak
CAT5 bridge pickup. The CAT5 pickup is a very remarkable single coil pickup designed by Curtis. You can think of it as a form of a "multi-tapped" pickup, but it is really much more than that as it is comprised of 4 independent coils (henceforth known
as A, B, C and D) all wrapped around the same magnet core serially. All 4 coils measure about 4K, but actually
sound quite different from one another due to their respective
proximity to the magnet core. The "A" pickup is closest
to the "core," and the "D" pickup is
furthest away and consequently sound different from one
another. Couple this pickup with the S15™ switching
and you can toggle between every possible combination of
the 4 coils by using the 4 slider switches (see coil combination
chart below). Don't confuse Curt's CAT5 pickup with a humbucker....its
not. The 4 pickups are all 4 subdivisions of a single coil,
so you retain all the single coil snap, crackle and twang,
even when you hit 16K.
SOUND SAMPLES
Listen to the following sound samples all the way through. All samples are performed by myself Andy Rothstein in my home studio. I am playing the BRIDGE PICKUP ONLY on all of these cuts. You will hear when the pickup switches. Absolutely no stomp boxes we're used at all, all overdrive changes are caused by the pickup overdriving the amp.
